


some feelings, they can travel too

by halcyonhowl (foxmoon)



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Love Confessions, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Romance, Taakitz Week
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-06
Updated: 2020-10-06
Packaged: 2021-03-08 00:06:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,166
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26856406
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foxmoon/pseuds/halcyonhowl
Summary: A collection of taakitz flashfics for Taakitz Week 2020 on Twitter.
Relationships: Kravitz/Taako (The Adventure Zone)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 17





	some feelings, they can travel too

**Author's Note:**

> The prompt was Beloved (canon continuation).

Taako is afraid that he’ll never be able to express the full extent of his love for Kravitz. He’s afraid that Kravitz will assume Taako’s love has a limit, that he’ll accept this, and be fine with it. He’ll carry on as if it doesn’t bother him when—what if it does? What if Kravitz feels he’s settling for less than all that he gives? Is there some deep, soft mourning that he tucks away? Has his heart learned how to beat around the pearl Taako lodged there?

Thoughts like this sometimes keep Taako up at night. Long after they’ve saved the planarverse. Long after friends and family have weddings and adopt children or dogs and forge new paths in this Faerun. Taako does what comes naturally to him, you see, and romantic ovatures have never been one of those things. He worries that words are brittle. They shift from one mood to another, crumble under scrutiny. They’re said so often they lose meaning. He worries that they sound phony dressed in his voice. Sometimes people think he’s joking when he’s serious. Sometimes people think he’s serious when he’s joking. He’s a known liar, after all. Not a great one, but he doesn’t have to be. People hang on his words whether they’re true or not, he just has that effect. It’s a vestigial defense forged from harsher years.

Kravitz isn’t one to send roses and chocolate hearts, and other such cliche things, but he does something better. He plants words of love in Taako’s mind so that he goes about his day immersed in the blooms. Taako stopped questioning how Kravitz feels long ago. Instead, he’s able to gather bouquets and garlands of Kravitz’s affection from within himself. If he’s had a rough day, if he sinks into anxiety brought on by phantoms of his past, he can turn to this garden of kind things and soft looks and firm embraces. He can go home, roll over in bed, pick up his farspeech stone, and Kravitz is there for him. 

It must be so fucking exhausting to be in love with Taako. But Kravitz never seems tired of it. 

There does come a time when Taako is so fed up with this worry that he has to say something, and so he blurts out, “You know I love you, right, Bones? But do you know how much?” 

Kravitz nods, says he has never felt so beloved before, and kisses Taako’s fingers. Taako could let it go there. He could roll his eyes at how fucking cheesy some of Kravitz’s lines are, and let himself be carried blissfully away by an inevitable makeout sesh. But he doesn’t. He turns more fully to face Kravitz, takes both of his hands.

“Listen, I mean it. Hold on— _I_ make you feel beloved? _Me? Taako?_ ” His voice rises an incredulous octave with each word. “ _Me?_ ” He still can’t get over this even though he has more he’d like to say. He’s stuck on _‘beloved’_ like it’s a rotting log at the bottom of the lake and he’s about to lose his best fishing lure.

Consternation settles into Kravitz’s features, then his eyes soften with affection. “Taako, of course you do. Every day.” He pauses, tilts his head. “Why do you seem so surprised?”

Taako begins to stutter out a reply, but Kravitz saves him from it with a disarming smile. 

“I’ll tell you how I know, all right?” he says. “But you have to promise to listen and not recoil in horror at how so obviously smitten you are with me.” 

Taako’s face pinches at that, but he relaxes seconds after. “ _Fiiiiine_.”

“Wonderful. Now, you recall how you opened up a portal to the Astral plane to save me? No easy feat, that.” He pauses for Taako to nod slowly, then continues, “then you ran through the chaos and debris of war to kiss me. Pretty sure that’s the most romantic thing that’s ever happened in my life _or_ death. I still ride that high, let me tell you. But that’s a big thing, so here are some little things—I know you’ve missed me because you make my favorite brownies when I’m gone on long bounties, and you leave all of the corner pieces for when I get back. I love the corner pieces. One time you read several books about how and why dangerous cults form, who tend to be their victims, why they involve necromancy so often, and so on. You joked with me that you wanted to see if you could get away with starting a zombie cult behind my back.”

“Hell yeah, woulda gotten away with it too, but bird mom is scary as shit.” 

Kravitz laughs. “Well, it meant you took an interest in what I do. You ask me questions about it, we had some incredible conversations that made both of us think. Remember?”

“We also kissed a lot if I recall.”

“You’re very kissable when your curiosity is sparked and you’re theorizing.”

Taako scuffs his foot like feeling reassured makes him bashful. He would typically recoil right about now, because there’s only so much he can stand to hear of his own softness. He said he wouldn’t, though, so good thing he’s stubborn too. 

Kravitz goes on like this for a while, listing out the various oblique gestures of love that Taako bakes into their lives like he’s adding seasonings he intuitively knows will make a meal taste better. Taako thinks that he finally understands, but that doesn’t mean he won’t still worry. Or he won’t still feel caught on that word. _Beloved_. 

Through their talk, they move from the window seat in the den of their shared home, to the kitchen for glasses of wine, to their balcony outdoors. They get lost in fond memories of the years since they won the battle with the Hunger. There have been other adventures since, and there will be more yet to come. 

When Taako suspects that Kravitz has lost the thread, because they’re enjoying this rambling, sometimes repetitive, bearing of souls under the setting sun, he goes quiet. This makes Kravitz go quiet. There’s a thick knot of anxiety in his chest, in his throat, making his teeth chatter a little. He breathes and it doesn’t go away but he moves through it. He reaches out to rest his hand on Kravitz’s cheek and he hears the soft little intake of breath. This warms Taako, and pushes out the words that were so tangled on the knot in his throat that he didn’t even realize they were there.

“Hey, if I make you feel beloved, it’s because… well, because you _are_. You’re dear to me. _I love you_. I-I feel confident enough to say I always will.” And then he adds a very soft and shaky _fuck_ as the anxiety is released with the words.

Kravitz smiles, tips his face into the palm of Taako’s hand, and closes his eyes. “Thank you.”


End file.
